Promise: Caulborn #2 (27 page)

I put one sweaty hand on the device, the other on Antonio’s skull and closed my eyes. Something barely noticeable brushed the corner of my mind. “Antonio’s going to guide your thoughts, Vincent,” Herb said. “Just relax.” I nodded as images flickered through my mind. Stars. No, constellations. Dozens of them, many of which were unfamiliar to me. A distant part of my mind realized these were the stars of a different dimension, someplace beyond Earth, beyond the Bright Side, beyond anything I knew.

Someplace Outside.

I saw a set of stars that looked like a shot glass if you connected them right. “Antonio says he’s found the place,” Herb said. His voice was very far away. “Let ’er rip.”

I drew on my power and Opened a portal. The canister grew warm beneath my hand, bright green light shooting from several of the gaps in the metal. The portal felt different than the other ones I’d created. Where those had felt clumsy and jagged, this one felt smooth, like I was tracing my hand across the surface of a pond. The portal opened onto a landscape of dark red grass and a pink sky.

“Ten seconds,” Gears called. “Hurry!”

Herb and Gears walked through. I scooped up the canister and followed. “It smells like popcorn,” Gears said, his nose crinkling.

“There are worse things,” I said. “Herb, what’s the word from Antonio? This the right place?”

Herb’s eyes flickered a faint orange. “Yes.”

“All righty then.” The portal abruptly sparked and flickered out of existence of its own volition.

“The copernicum expired,” Gears said as he stowed the device in the backpack.

Herb looked at me pointedly. “So how do we get back?”

“The Keepers have devices that let them jump back and forth between dimensions,” I said. At least, that’s how the Chroniclers did it, so it stood to reason the Keepers did, too. “We’ll steal one of those and hop home.”

“Planning ahead isn’t exactly your strong suit, is it?” Herb asked.

I ignored the question. “Can Antonio get a fix on Megan? No, wait,” I said, pointing to the right. “This way.”

“How do you know?” Gears asked.

I looked at my outstretched hand. How had I known? It felt right, but I couldn’t articulate it much more than that. “Call it a hunch,” I said.

“Well, Antonio agrees with your hunch,” Herb said. He regarded the skull for a moment. “He’s done his job, so it’s time to release his spirit. It’s only fair.”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m thinking it’ll be just over the next hill.” Sure enough, there was a series of buildings surrounded by a giant chain-link fence. Covered guard towers stood at the four corners, giving the place the look and feel of the set of
Hogan’s Heroes
. Herb murmured something in his strange language and nodded to himself before stuffing Antonio’s skull into his pack. He must’ve dismissed the spirit.

Gears rooted around in his bag until he came out with a pair of binoculars that were nearly as big as he was. “Okay, we’ve got two sentries in each tower. They’ve got sidearms and some sort of big gun mounted in each one. Searchlights, too, by the look of things.” He panned to the left. “No foot sentries between the towers. Pff. That’s just sloppy. Although I suppose that could mean they’ve got land mines.”

“Or that the fence is electrified,” I said, wincing at the memory.

“Good thought, Vinnie. Hang on while I shift spectrums.” There was a clicking as Gears turned a wheel on top of the binoculars. “Well would you look at that. Not just electricity, but some sort of low level radiation, too.”

“So they’d electrocute us and give us cancer?” I asked.

“Not sure. I’m not familiar with this particular form of radiation.” He panned back and forth. “Let’s see, where’s your power source…” A good fifteen seconds went by as Gears searched. “Ah, there you are. See that little building over on the right with the peaked roof?”

“The blue one that looks like a toolshed?” Herb asked.

“Yep, that’s the one. The generators powering that fence are in there. I can see their energy signatures.” Gears lowered the binoculars. “I can get in there and disable them, Vinnie. Then you and Herb can scale the fence.”

“Gears, the Keepers have access to technology that doesn’t exist in our universe. You’ve probably never seen anything like it before.”

Gearstripper gave me a wicked smile. “Then I’ll get to break something new,” he said, his voice taking on a sinister tone. “Come on, Vinnie, launch me over the fence and let’s get Megan back.”

“Hang on,” Herb said. “The guards in the towers will see you. Give me a second to see if I can get you a distraction.” His eyes went orange and he gasped. His face paled and he swooned.

I caught him by the shoulders. “Herb, stay with me, man. What’s wrong?”

“There are so many dead here,” he whispered. “Thousands upon thousands of them. And they’re all so angry,” his orange eyes were wide in horror. “I’ve never felt this level of hatred for the living before. It’s staggering.”

“Why didn’t you feel this when we came through the portal?”

Herb shook his head. “They weren’t there. They’re all inside that fence. None of these spirits will help us willingly.” His eyes abruptly shifted back to brown and he sat down hard.

“Okay, that’s good to know,” I said. “All right, plan B. Gears, let me borrow your binoculars.” I scanned the watchtowers. Each of the towers had canvas camp chairs. One of the guards was standing, presumably surveying the area, while the other sat in the chair. The seated guards were making notes in a ledger. Maybe logging all-clears? I glanced at the fence. It was maybe ten feet high.

I let out a breath. Holy shit, I was going to have to be fast to pull this off. “All right, Gears, are you ready?”

“Wait,” Herb said. “Shouldn’t we wait for nightfall?”

I looked around. “Do you know when that might happen? This isn’t our universe. For all we know, this
is
night. There aren’t any suns in the sky, and I have no idea how time works here. Our best bet is to get in and get out so fast that the Keepers don’t know what hit them.”

Herb nodded reluctantly. “I was hoping for more of a plan than this. We’re just making this up as we go.”

“It’s not a perfect world,” I said, a little harder than I’d intended. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ll create a distraction and launch Gears over the fence. We’ll use the binoculars to see when the generators are down. Then you and I will sneak in.”

“They’ll see us scaling the fence,” Herb said. “They might miss Gearstripper, but you and I are a lot bigger than he is.”

“Let me worry about that. You just keep your spectral senses going and let me know if we’re risking an undead attack.” I could tell Herb wasn’t happy about it. Hell, I wasn’t happy about it, but I didn’t see any other way.

“Let’s do it, Vinnie,” Gears said, tensing his little body.

“Good luck, Gears.” I took a good hard look at the two watchtowers closest to us and let out a slow breath. Then I shut my eyes, pictured the cloth chairs in my mind, and sent the tiniest thread of fire out into them. The flames bored through the bottoms of the watchtowers like a laser beam and seared the cloth of the chairs, cutting the seats neatly in half in less than a second. Both of the seated guards fell to the floor with a thud, and their standing partners turned to see what had happened. Before they could react any further, I sent Gears over the fence and telekinetically cushioned his landing on the other side. He took off at a run toward the generator building.

I sat down on the red grass next to Herb and raised the binoculars. The guards in the towers were looking at the neatly broken canvas, but my threads of fire had been so fine, they had left only pinprick-sized holes in the floors. There was no way they’d find them.

“Do you think he’ll be able to do it?” Herb asked.

“Gearstripper was one of the best saboteurs in World War II,” I replied. “There is absolutely no doubt in my mind he’ll be able to do it.” Of course, doubts started creeping in after ten minutes had gone by. Through the binoculars, the fence glowed with electricity and radiation. The muscles in my shoulders relaxed when the fence suddenly went dark. “He did it,” I grinned.

“Great,” Herb said. “Now how do we get past the guards?”

Focusing on the first watchtower, I reached out telekinetically and latched onto the head of the guard facing our direction, slamming it into the side of the watchtower. As the guard slumped, his partner popped up into view, and I repeated the attack. I did that to the guards in the second tower on our side and held my breath. No alarms. I then reached out to the towers on the two far corners and did the same.

“Why didn’t you do that before?” Herb asked me as we got to our feet.

“Because I didn’t know if there would be a scheduled check in or a shift change or some other stupid thing that might tip off the Keepers that something was wrong. Come on, let’s get climbing.” I grabbed on to the fence and hoisted myself up. A minute later, I had shimmied down the other side. Herb was still struggling to reach the top. His face was red and he was huffing. I telekinetically grabbed him and hauled him the rest of the way. The man was heavy, but I managed to get him back on the ground without jolting him too much.

My eyes flashed around as we ran for the shed. There were three other buildings, two that looked like old Victorian houses and one four-story brick structure. I had a strong feeling that Megan was in the brick building. I was sure of it, in fact. Gears stuck his head around the corner and waved us over to a narrow door. We ducked inside. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Gears’s eyes were alight with glee. “Vinnie, you weren’t kidding. They have some really cool stuff here,” he whispered. “I cannot wait to try and build some of this stuff when we get back home. I’m pretty sure they’ve got a perpetual motion machine in here somewhere.”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious. “Hang on a sec, Gears.” I opened my mind to my followers. While most of the Urisk were no longer amber-ized, they’d be disoriented after waking up, so currently only a few prayers were being offered. But there was one voice that stuck out. “Please give me back my family, Lord Corinthos. Please.” Daimin. And then I realized how I knew Megan’s location so precisely. When the Urisk emerged from their chrysalises, they sometimes acquired new powers. Daimin had gained a sort of dowsing ability that allowed him to locate things. And since he could do it, so could I.

I comforted Daimin as best as I could and turned my attention back to the task at hand. Herb was looking at the shredded remains of a junction box. Three diagonal slashes an inch deep ran through it. A bundle of wires as thick as my wrist looked like it’d been chewed through, and a series of now dark gauges had been completely smashed.

Herb looked at the damage and back at Gears. The gremlin grinned innocently. Herb looked at me. I just shrugged. “Told you he was the best,” I said. “Okay, Megan’s being held in the big brick building. We need to find a way inside. Gears, I don’t suppose you saw any duct work or secret elevator shafts that’d let us push the easy button on that, did you?”

“Afraid not, Vinnie.”

Herb peeked through the slats that faced the brick building. “No windows on the first floor,” he said. “The ones on the second and third floors are bricked up.” He shifted, trying to get a better view around the slats. “I only see the one door on the ground floor.”

Gears was rummaging around under a workbench, mumbling to himself. I heard tape being torn and a few other sounds I couldn’t readily identify. “Um, Gears? What are you up to there?”

Gears emerged from beneath the bench holding a battered metal canister. “I love this place, Vinnie,” he said, eyes alight. “They’ve got ammonium nitrate and petroleum products just lying around.”

“Should those mean something to me?”

Gears was positively beaming. “On their own, no. But combined, they mean ‘boom.’”

“So you want to blow open the door?” Herb asked. “That’s not exactly subtle, is it?”

Gears looked at him. “Blow open the door? No. I just like making explosives.” Herb was looking at Gears with an exasperated expression. Gears looked up at me. “What’s with Herb, Vinnie?”

“Herb’s still getting used to working with gremlins. But that bomb gives me an idea, Gears. How much of a boom are we talking about? Loud bang boom or blow up the building kind of boom?”

“With all the other materials in here? Blow up the building, of course.”

Herb took a few steps away from the gremlin.

“Okay, good,” I said. Herb looked at me incredulously. “Here’s what we do.”

Ten minutes later, I’d levitated down four of the unconscious guards from the two closest towers, and we’d dragged them back to the shed. Their dark suits seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, and I wondered what sort of paranormal worm silk their outfits were made of. The masks they wore were completely featureless, and that was just plain creepy. They were about my build, which was fine for me but bad for Herb, given that we were going to take their clothes. I froze when I pulled the mask off of the first guard. “Well, well, Laras himself,” I said when I saw the Keeper’s face. “Wasn’t expecting him to be pulling guard duty.”

“Um, Vincent?” Herb said. “He’s twins?” I looked to see that Herb had unmasked his guard as well, and Laras’s visage was there, too. I tugged the mask off of the other guards. They all looked like Laras.

“Clone troopers?” Gearstripper asked. “Think he’s got Spaarti Cylinders in here somewhere?”

“Spaarti Cylinders?” Herb asked.

“
Star Wars
stuff,” I said, waving a hand. “And I’m not sure, Gears. The only two Keepers I met were Laras and his secretary, Julie.” I rubbed my face. I didn’t have time to consider the implications of this. “This doesn’t change the plan. Just stay sharp.”

Herb snorted. “The plan. Right. You mean it doesn’t change the fact that we’re flying by the seat of our pants.” I ground my teeth but didn’t say anything; no doubt Herb was getting surly because he was worried about Megan.

After Herb and I put on their uniforms and masks, we hid the unclothed guards by one of the towers and dragged the other two unconscious guards closer to the brick building. Despite the fact that it covered my entire face with a single piece of material, the mask was downright comfortable and didn’t impede my vision.